Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Domon]

"Thank you again for your efforts, looking forward to trying this out. As much as I disagree (strongly) with the balance in some of your decisions"

well, when this is somewhat final perhaps a way could be found to make the realtime tweaker work fully with CoM. than you can experiment most of the balance changes you'd like.

[Catwalk]

Probably not likely, but that would certainly be neat.

Seravy, I think Cult Leader and/or Spellweaver is bugged. In my current test game I have 6 books, Shrine + Parthenon. I have both Cult Leader and Spellweaver. When I built the shrine, I got 12 mana in my capital and 16 on my magic screen. The city breakdown showed 9 from books and 3 from Shrine. All good. When I built a Parthenon the following turn I got 13 mana in my capital and 17 on my magic screen. City breakdown showed 9 from books, 1 from Shrine and 3 from Parthenon.

EDIT: Scratch that, I was using ALT+PWR and I think one of the enemies cast a global spell reducing power sources

[Seravy]

3.31 brings new, experimental starting conditions that I hope will improve early game balance.

3.31
-Fixed bug : Players cannot cast spells on turn 1 - their casting skill “remaining” for the turn is zero.
-Each wizard starts the game with a Sawmill already built in their capital.
-AI wizards now start with (100*Difficulty level) gold and (25*Difficulty level) mana.
-AI wizards get additional starting swordsmen based on the difficulty level : Hard = +1 Swordsmen, Extreme = +3 Swordsmen, Impossible = +5 Swordsmen.
-AI wizards are now allowed pushing out early units from their capital before turn 15 instead of 30.
-Earliest turn for the AI to start a war lowered to 30, to turn hostile, lowered to 25. (Previous numbers were 40 and 37)

[Catwalk]

Are the extra swordsmen for the capital only or for all expansions?

[Seravy]

Are the extra swordsmen for the capital only or for all expansions?

capital only.

[Catwalk]

Bug report with unit amounts shown for lairs.

The game has three levels: A(n), a few, many.
A(n) is meant to be 1.
A few is meant to be 2-3.
Many is meant to be 4+.

Instead, A(n) means 1-2.
A few means 3-4.
Many means 5+.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but the latter is far more intuitive and gives better information. In particular, it's crucial to know whether there's one or two Great Drakes.

[Catwalk]

Are the extra swordsmen for the capital only or for all expansions?

capital only.

How much would this help? Swordsmen are pushover units, that would just give them extra upkeep early on which stifles their economy.

I could definitely see it working for new expansions, though.

[Seravy]

Bug report with unit amounts shown for lairs.

The game has three levels: A(n), a few, many.
A(n) is meant to be 1.
A few is meant to be 2-3.
Many is meant to be 4+.

Instead, A(n) means 1-2.
A few means 3-4.
Many means 5+.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but the latter is far more intuitive and gives better information. In particular, it's crucial to know whether there's one or two Great Drakes.

No, this is intentional. I don't want it to give overly good information. The player has to be cautious when the monster reported is dangerous and they can handle only one.

How much would this help? Swordsmen are pushover units, that would just give them extra upkeep early on which stifles their economy.

This is a replacement for making Life AI do "units first" instead of "settlers first". Life wizards have no summons, and need some units to target with their buffs. It also increases the chance the AI can pull units into new settlements - for that to happen idle units need to exist and numbers are what help that happen, not quality.

Adding extra swordsmen to new settlements is a nice idea - except it makes it far too obvious for the human player the AI is cheating and does so in a way players probably won't tolerate.  The AI is not getting free units in any other way or form during the game for this reason - a resource bonus is always more acceptable for players than free units. On the capital it's not much of a problem - they are part of the AI's starting advantage, and players won't even see them unless they use RVL.

About the upkeep, good catch, I'll look into that.
...impossible : the AI has zero extra farmers. wait, that doesn't sound right. 7 units at 0.3 maintenance should eat 1.05 units of food and that requires 1 farmer. I wonder if there is a bug here? The units did not disband though.
extreme : same deal, the AI can feed the units without any extra farmers
hard : not any different.

oh, the rounding.
Impossible : 7 units = 3 food = 0.9 AI upkeep -> 0
Extreme : 5 units = 2 food = 0.8 AI upkeep -> 0
Hard : 3 units = 1 food = 0.5 AI upkeep -> 0

so no need to worry about that. They might need a farmer on impossible after they produce a settler, though....no they do not. The population drops to 3 so they end up with 1 excess food. And the swordsmen can actually participate in clearing easy nodes or neutral cities if the AI is lucky which is more than profitable.

[Catwalk]

The extra swordsmen fill a very obvious gap, though: The AI is unable to provide escorts for their settlers. You can wipe out their expansions each and every time if you can kill one unit of swordsmen. As an Impossible level player, I'm disappointed every time I see that the AI has so many resources yet fails to protect itself. I would be overjoyed to see it get more units, and I'm not kidding myself about the bonuses it receives. If anything, I much prefer these bonuses being out in the open so I know what I'm up against. Since you're arguing that other players would not tolerate this, why don't we ask other players their opinion? If they like it, will you do it? This should be for Extreme and Impossible only, of course. I'm thinking +1 for Extreme and +3 for Impossible.

How about giving them a pop 5 capital on Extreme and pop 6 on Impossible?

[Catwalk]

Bug report with unit amounts shown for lairs.

The game has three levels: A(n), a few, many.
A(n) is meant to be 1.
A few is meant to be 2-3.
Many is meant to be 4+.

Instead, A(n) means 1-2.
A few means 3-4.
Many means 5+.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but the latter is far more intuitive and gives better information. In particular, it's crucial to know whether there's one or two Great Drakes.

No, this is intentional. I don't want it to give overly good information. The player has to be cautious when the monster reported is dangerous and they can handle only one.

But this doesn't just affect Earth Lore. When they've visited a lair and seen 2 Great Drakes, do you want the map to label it as 1 Great Drake afterwards? What is the interesting challenge with sending spearmen and magic spirits around the world to peek into lairs before attacking? What does it add to the game? Yes, it's always been that way and so on, but we've inherited so much bad design from the original game.